This invention relates to stalk shredders and furrow sweeps which may be used alone or in combination.
The typical stalk shredder will involve a blade rotating about a vertical axis in a housing which chops the stalks into smaller pieces and returns them to the ground. The stalk shredder will cover the entire row and in the case of ridge farming will cover both the ridge and the furrow as the stalks in the furrow will be left for the shredder to act upon them as it passes over them.
It is thus an object of this invention to provide furrow sweeps for moving the stalks from the furrows onto the ridges where a stalk cutter moving along the ridges can act upon the collected debris and reduce it to smaller sized pieces. A further object is to maximize the shredding while minimizing the energy requirements for operating the shredder.